29. Jessika
TWENTY-NINE
JESSIKA
Deputy Collins comes to the ranch on a Thursday afternoon.
I see his cruiser coming down the drive from the kitchen window and I have my phone out and a text to Brian Holt drafted before he even parked.
My father is in the barn. I'm alone in the house.
Collins knocks.
I open the door.
He looks at me with the complicated expression I've been cataloguing over the past weeks, the watchfulness, the calculation, the occasional flicker of something that might be guilt.
"Ms. Mills. Mind if I come in?"
"I'd prefer we talk out here," I say pleasantly. The porch is visible from the road. Witnesses.
He reads this. His expression adjusts.
"Fair enough." He stands on the top porch step, hat in hand, the politeness of the formal approach. "I heard you've been in contact with someone at the state attorney general's office."
I don't answer.
"I'm not here to threaten anyone," he says. "I want to be clear about that. I'm here because I think there are some misunderstandings about the situation, and I'd like to?—"
"Deputy Collins." My voice is very calm. "I'm a family attorney with fourteen years of experience. I understand what a proffer is and what it isn't, and this conversation is not one I intend to have without legal representation present."
He stops.
Studies me.
"You've talked to Holt," he says. Quietly.
"I haven't confirmed or denied?—"
"His name is specific enough that your non-confirmation is an answer." He looks at me steadily. "Ms. Mills, Jessika. I want you to understand something. The situation you think you know, it’s not as straightforward as?—"
"Deputy." I hold his gaze. "Stop."
He stops.
"I know about the email that Morgan saw on the copier," I say.
"I know about Meridian Industrial. I know about the introduction you made to Morgan's dealer eight months before he went off-grid.
" I watch his face go through several things very quickly.
"I know all of it. And Brian Holt knows most of it.
" I pause. "If you're here to manage the situation, you're three days too late. "
Silence.
Collins looks at the middle distance for a moment, the look of a man recalculating something he thought he had managed.
"Morgan is alive," he says. Quietly.
"I know."
"And you're going to bring him back to testify."
"That's between Morgan and the attorney general's office."
He looks at me. "Grant Vance has been in your ear."
"Grant Vance has been fixing my fences and protecting my daughter and telling me the truth," I say. "In that order."
Something moves across Collins's face. Not quite guilt. The specific expression of someone who has made choices they can't undo and has just been reminded of all of them.
"I want you to know," he says, "that I tried to keep the worst of it from landing on Grant. That the situations where I could, I did what I could."
I look at him.
"That's not the same thing as doing right," I say.
"No," he agrees. "It's not."
He stands on the porch step for a moment.
"When this comes out," he says. "Holcomb is going to point in every direction he can. He has money and relationships and he'll make this messy."
"I expect that," I say.
"Grant will be a target."
"I know."
"He always is."
I meet his eyes. "This time he has a lawyer," I say. "And the truth on his side. And the testimony of a man who was a witness to everything." I pause. "And me."
Collins studies me.
Then he nods once. Short.
He goes to his car.
At the driver's door, he stops.
"I'm going to call Holt myself," he says. "Tomorrow." He doesn't look at me. "I've been sitting with this long enough."
He gets in the car and drives away.
I stand on the porch until the cruiser disappears around the tree line.
Then I text Grant: Collins just left. I think he might flip.
Grant texts back in about thirty seconds: Collins is smarter than he is brave. If he's scared enough, he'll make the right call.
Then: Are you okay?
I look at the empty driveway. At the barn. At the horses in the pasture moving peacefully in the afternoon light.
Yes, I text back. I think I am.
The timeline that Collins doesn't know has been altered: in my bag there's a copy of everything, the documents, the journals, the incident reports that has already been uploaded to a secure server, already shared with Holt's office, already on record in a place that Collins and Holcomb can't touch.
Three days too late is not an accident.
I planned it that way.